Antigua Bucket Shot
Bucket Shot - Antigua, Guatemala
Five years ago we celebrated our 25th Anniversary by spending 10 days in England. Now we wanted to again make our anniversary gift to each other another trip. On the short list was Newfoundland, Eastern Provinces, and/or another trip to Europe. And then Hannah was accepted to go to Guatemala with CMU’s Estamos program. It would give her a semester of study learning the language and culture of another country while understanding global issues impacting Central America. So with the approval of Hannah we turned our attention south to Guatemala as our anniversary trip.
We booked our tickets and then started to plan out our 10 days in Guatemala. Antigua was high on the list, recommended by many and featured in almost every travel blog about the country. Antigua is the historical colonial capital of most of Central America prior to independence movements from Spanish control. It was abandoned as an official capital and was severely damaged in 1976 in a major earthquake. But since then the city has received a Unesco World Heritage Site designation allowing to keep all of it original colonial architectural styling while being rebuilt.
Featured on almost every advertising of Guatemala and particularly the city of Antigua, is the iconic arch. Originally it connected a school with a convent and allowed the nuns to walk back and forth between the buildings without having to go outside. In many of the photos what I saw was the arch framing a volcano in the background. I decided that I wanted to capture a similar image. Before arriving I used my planning apps to plot the path of sun during the time we would be there and imagined what I might need to do to capture the iconic image.
We arrived in Antigua at 8:30am on the Tuesday, and after checking in, walked to a restaurant near the arch for breakfast. I took my camera along to scope it out and between dodging traffic and the swarm of tourists taking photos in front of the arch, I knew that my bucket shot would be a challenge. A couple of days into our stay I realized that if I was going to get a shot it would need to be in the morning as by the afternoon the volcano, named Agua, was frequently obscured by clouds.
We had timed our time in Antigua to coincide with the All Saints’ Day long weekend and so we realized, starting on Thursday night that they were restricting traffic going up and down the arch street. So Sunday morning, I left our hotel and walked the two and a half blocks to the arch and captured the image that is featured here. You can clearly see Volcano Agua framed perfectly in the arch with a few clouds adding interest into the photo. Captured in the photo is a few tourists, a tuktuk, and one of the many merchants making their way to select their preferred location. The cobbled street shown is typical to all the streets in Antigua, making it treacherous of vehicles travelling up and down the streets.
Whenever you’re taking photos you need to make certain compromises. Had I brought a lens wider than 24mm I would have been able to include more of the buildings in front of the arch, but that would have added more room than I had available. I also chose a perspective that made sure to prioritize framing the volcano over making sure I was perfectly centred in the arch.
For those of you who are engaged with he AI debate in photography, I chose to keep the people in the image to create a more authentic photo rather than removing them to “clean up” the photo. It was definitely a bucket shot that captures a realism of that iconic landmark.
